In this article we’ll talk about how to learn affiliate marketing and how you can get right into it without spending a lot of cash or time studying.
It’s all rather simple, and we’ll break it down and provide you with all the information that you need to start building an affiliate marketing business today.
First, let’s start with the basics.
How to Learn Affiliate Marketing:
Affiliate marketing is the act of promoting someone else’s product for a commission fee, these programs exist in all kinds of industries, and it’s a win-win for everyone involved.
As an affiliate marketer, your job is promotion; which in the online world, that means sending as much traffic as possible to your affiliate links.
There are a number of ways to do this, and we’ll mention a few of the simpler strategies in this article.
If you’re wondering how to learn affiliate marketing then you would be happy to know it’s not as complicated as you might think.
Once you have an affiliate link, it’s all a matter of getting that link in front of people who need the product.
That’s the core goal of marketing!
Where to Find Affiliate Marketing Products:
In the online world, where there are thousands of communities, it can be difficult to find a community that needs the product you chose to promote.
But with a little bit of research, it can be done!
For Any Niche:
Just Google the Product Name + Affiliate Program. So if Kite Making is the Niche, it’s.. Kite Making + Affiliate Program.
For Online Business Niche:
It’s remarkably easy to find products to promote, one of the best portals for affiliates is Clickbank, the largest affiliate program portal on the internet.
On the other hand, it’s a good idea to test the product beforehand, and make sure it’s a decent product before you start to promote it, otherwise you’ll be spreading more scams, and that won’t benefit anyone.
P.S. This article sums up my entire online business strategy in less than 1,000 words.
Most online marketers begin their journey with Clickbank, it’s the affiliate marketers first stepping stone, once you master it, the rest is a walk in the park.
Still, regardless of the specific portal or program you choose to promote, the principals remain the same; you’ll still have to get traffic and sales.
Special Note: The hardest part is making sales, not finding a product to promote!
Almost every company has an affiliate program that you can join, finding a product to promote is easy!
Affiliate Marketing and Traffic Sources:
Traffic is the key to a successful affiliate marketing business. If people aren’t seeing the product or service, nobody will buy it.
There are two types of traffic: fast and long-term.
Fast traffic is paid traffic, there are ways to get fast free traffic, but they’re usually not very effective.
If you want fast traffic, the best bet is to just buy it from a decent source, like Google, or Facebook, or any other legitimate traffic company that delivers good results.
The problem with fast traffic is that once your campaign ends, the traffic dries up, and that means sales dry up too.
In other words, in order to make sales, one must continue spending money on traffic, and sometimes traffic can be quite expensive, especially if you’re still tweaking campaign settings and testing out different configurations.
Getting Traffic For Free:
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a steady flow of traffic coming in without having to pay for it?
Well, that’s where long-term traffic comes into the picture.
This traffic comes from sources like Google search engine results. It’s the preferred method of traffic because it’s free, consistent, and there’s a lot of potential to target keywords.
P.S. Click the image below to discover how I find long-tail keywords that bring in thousands of hits!
Almost all my traffic comes from writing keyword targeted articles, and if I can do it, I’m sure you can too.
We already talked about how to find good keywords, and how to write keyword targeted articles.
There’s another method I use, and it’s just as effective…
Affiliate and Email Marketing Work Together:
It’s called email marketing. Which is building a list of contacts and then sending out helpful emails to those contacts, with affiliate links included.
This is another way to send traffic to your affiliate links, and it’s pretty simple too, all you need is an email management service, and an incentive for people to sign-up…
- A free book, a free series of helpful emails, a video, an audio file, a discount code, etc..
Still, to get sign-ups, we’ll need traffic, and there are two sources we can use: social media and Google.
Social Media and Affiliate Marketing:
Ranking in Google is somewhat of a long-term traffic strategy for your affiliate marking business.
Social media traffic is fast (and it can be consistent too) but you’ll need to know how to use social media. This article explains all about how to promote your business on social media.
So, if you’re wondering how to learn affiliate marketing remember that the hardest part is traffic.
Forget about all the little complicated details, and just remember that it’s all about traffic. If you can find a good source of traffic, that’s awesome, but if you don’t know how to get traffic, then you’ll need to learn.
If you don’t know how to get traffic then your affiliate marketing business won’t succeed.
Brush up on these traffic generation strategies and it’ll be worth it.
Conclusion on How to Learn Affiliate Marketing:
The awesome thing about working online is that you can create a lot of different sources of passive income. Over time they’ll add up to provide you with an excellent monthly income.
So let’s not get caught up in the details and over-think the process too much, it’s easy to make money online once you figure out how to get traffic.
It all comes down to traffic, and traffic can come from anywhere, but the simplest strategy is to write keyword targeted articles (This is what I use to bring in 1,000’s of visitors to this site alone per day).
I learned how to do this by following a simple step by step training program. It’s worked wonderfully.
If you would like to do the same thing, hit the link below.
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So how to learn affiliate marketing? Get connected, get educated, and be willing to take action on what you learn.
Stick with this game plan and you’ll find online success.
I agree with you that affiliate marketing does sound like a win-win situation where you can sell other products without having to design, package and ship your own with all the other things entailed with it.
You mention the importance of traffic and the two main types. What would you say the average costs for advertising would be to generate a good flow of traffic for sales?
Hi Travis,
PPC campaigns can really vary. It all depends on the keyword phrases you are targeting. Wealthy Affiliate has an advanced Google Adwords training course that you should go through before you start setting up your campaigns.
You can pay as low as 5 cents per click to 30 dollars/click, so make sure you go through the training before dishing out money.
They walk you through how to structure your campaigns from start to finish and it really helps avoid mistakes.
Best,
Todd
Hi. That’s a good overview of affiliate marketing and it does a good job of pointing out the main thing to focus on, i.e. traffic.
I’m curious though as to why you consider paid traffic, specifically pay per click traffic, short term traffic.
Obviously, free search engine traffic is better. However, as long as your PPC campaign is profitable, doesn’t it make sense to continue doing it indefinitely? Especially if your real goal is to build a mailing list.
Then the more traffic you can drive to your site the better even if you’re not making a large profit off of it on that first visit.
Absolutely Jason, if you can pay for your system and it pays you back a profit, you’ll be doing great.
I’m not sure if you’ve seen Wealthy Affiliate’s training on building PPC campaigns with Google Adwords, but it’s all about relativity and you should definitely check it out if this is the way you want to get your traffic.
If your PPC ad is targeting the right people who are interested in what you sell, then drive them to a landing page, you can do great.
However, I think you’ll find most PPC campaigns do better when they target people not to buy something, but to opt-in.
So if email marketing is how you will make your affiliate commissions, you may find it takes a good while to see the payoff for the PPC advertising.
I’ve found that direct sales from PPC don’t convert as high as you’d think and that organic traffic does much better.
But these are complicated subjects and there are numerous factors involved, split testing, etc.
I prefer to target low competition phrase that people are searching for to really narrow down there searches. That way my audience is better targeted at a deeper level in the sales funnel.
I’d love to hear how it goes for you.
Thanks,
Todd
Hi Todd, thanks for putting together this article on how affiliate marketing works.
Affiliate marketing is a subject that has been a mystery to me in the past.
It sure has become a lot easier these days with all the resources available. But it can be confusing to new comers.
I guess it all comes down to a numbers game. Unlike gambling, you can steer the odds in your favor by doing some research, attracting the right audience, sharing your experiences and building a relationship with them!
Cheers and very best, Oren
Hi Oren,
I think your getting a good grasp on affiliate marketing. The key focus when you get started is content production with the intent of targeting each and every post.
Now some pages what be targeted for organic traffic, but every post should be researched and targeted.
If you need a guide on how I do this, you’re welcome to grab our Free eBook on Targeting Traffic.
Hope this helps and thanks for your feedback, much appreciated.
Todd
Nice article.
I totally agree that the hardest part is getting real and targeted traffic. I’m still learning the whole process and just built my first site a couple of months ago at WA and can’t wait to start getting more organic traffic.
How long does it take to start getting good amounts of organic traffic from the search engines?
Awesome Jeff,
Learning affiliate marketing is awesome. You will do awesome with your attitude and ambition.
I wrote this post to give everyone the perspective I wish I had before I got started online.
Here it is.. How long does it take to make money online…
Salud,
Todd
I really love this post on how to learn affiliate marketing, you have a lot of detailed information on affiliate marketing and how anyone can make it work for themselves.
A lot of people actually overthink the process. To make things simple as an affiliate marketer, make good use of the resources given to you. all you need to do is master the tools you have. Don’t go around listening or watching videos that complicate the process or introduce too many concepts at once, you are going to have information overload and this causes many to give up too soon.
That’s so true King. I have felt this many times and even today find myself over analyzing affiliate marketing concepts. For me, I think I do best when I focus on one lesson or task at a time.
And I always try to write for my readers to provide them with useful information. One great thing about Wealthy Affiliate as a resource is that they have structured classes that make you focus on one task at a time.
With this method, you’ll find that cumulatively you will make much better progress with each passing week.
Cheers,
Todd
This is a good write up about affiliate marketing, I am really interested to know actually how long does it take for a keyword on your article to get ranked? What is the step required for building your content to be search engine optimized?
Lastly, what is the best affiliate program that works out to be the best for you thus far?
Hi Matthew, good questions. Ranking depends on the content competition and your niche authority. Some major posts I’ve written have taken minutes to rank, some a few hours. Other posts have taken months.
Not only is it important to look at keyword competition, but you should run a search on the keywords you’re targeting and make sure that these keywords aren’t already targeted by massive authoritative sites, these are super challenging to break the first page for a small niche site, but it can happen.
The steps to build content with almost every little SEO white hat secret can be learned in our free Laser Targeted Traffic eBook. I break down exactly what I do for each and every post to rank quickly.
Best affiliate, tough question. That too depends on your niche. I try to only target one product at a time and I write numerous posts based on that product. Amazon is an easy affiliate that converts high. Find a product that matches your niche, has an awesome reputation and reviews and target that product. See if you can write 5 keyword targeted posts about that one product.
As those posts rank, traffic will come and so will conversions for online sales.
Cheers,
Todd
You have described how to actually learn affiliate marketing brilliantly and btw… your website is awesome! You have all the educational elements for a newbie or a seasoned professional to become successful in the online world.
I am building out my site as well and you have presented affiliate marketing concepts that have given me some new ideas! Your site inspires me as I have bookmarked it! Keep up the great work, I will be visiting from time to time!
That’s great to hear Art. If you really want to be inspired, challenged, and given an inside edge in affiliate marketing, I’d check out a Wealthy Affiliate Membership, either the free one to take a look or the Premium service to launch your online career.
Let me know if you need any help,
Todd
Informative site. I believe that if people have the information they need and apply themselves, then good things will happen.
Affiliate marketing isn’t a big mystery. By following the outline you have provided here they will be up and running in no time. By joining a reputable Affiliate program like Wealthy Affiliate they will get all the tools needed.
Good luck with your business!
Hi Chris,
Wealthy Affiliate is the place to learn affiliate marketing, building websites, becoming a keyword research ninja, and is also a great affiliate program themselves.
But the important thing is to follow a passion, a niche, then learn the skills these guys teach and do it on a daily business. I really think you have to approach this like going to college.
Affiliate marketing is super simple. You are just marketing and selling other peoples products. The key points are to get a niche, learn the technical stuff, then provide good products to people that like the same things as you (people that share the same niche).
Once someone comes to your affiliate link, clicks on it, makes a sale, you make a commission. It’s the simplest form of online business that can provide long term wealth. Every successful website uses affiliate marketing.
Click the links here to read more and if you have more questions, just let me know.
Todd
Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. It definitely is not a ‘get rich scheme’ but the more hard work you put in the more dividends you get back. Why do you look for 500/1000 visitors per day, is that your personal target when affiliate marketing?
I love how you have made the process of affiliate marketing quite simple. For most people starting out it is quite complex and scary. Wealthy Affiliate is one of the best programs to join in my opinion and it is where I have learned the majority of my knowledge which I still use today.
Hi Keldyn,
I look for that many visitors per day based on the conversion rates I see on my affiliate programs I promote. This is a good amount of traffic to see some significant sales and monthly cash flow.
When looking at a specific niche, I want that niche to have at least 5,000 monthly visitors searching related keyword terms to the specific niche.
Now everything is relevant in your specific niche, but there needs to be a decent amount of traffic and the ability to reach those people through keyword research or mastering PPC advertising.
You also should know that social media is a great way to do affiliate marketing if you have a large following. If you post great information that helps people that already trust you, you could make sales with a simple Facebook post.
Here’s our resent post on how to use social media to promote your business.
Hope this helps,
Todd
Hi Todd,
Great post, you’ve essentially managed to describe the entire affiliate marketing process in a single post (something I’ve never succeeded in doing)
I’m glad you’ve stated that there are both short term and long term methods of gaining traffic, I find too many people tend to focus on one or the other.
I see you recommend a product called Hoth Blitz, what exactly does it do?
Hey Nate, thanks for your feedback on the best way to learn affiliate marketing, much appreciated.
I’ve found if you focus on the long term, even as short as a couple months or 6 months. If you give yourself reasonable and measurable goals, you will see that long term success is a reality.
Hoth is a grey hat SEO technique that you can check out to try to improve your rankings. I’ve tested them out and had nice results, but I don’t use them on a regular basis because my site’s at a point where I naturally rank very well and without much time.
But worth checking out if you’re into grey hat SEO techniques.
Todd
I ran to a similar review of yours a while ago, that’s how I learned about WA. I have never been prouder than when I first made my website and first post. I keep learning new things everyday and the community there is wonderful and helpful in every possible way. Keep up the good work!
Hi Bruce,
That’s so cool to share you opinion of Wealthy Affiliate. I know how you feel too, it sometimes doesn’t seem that WA could be real.
A truly helpful community that is always lending a helping hand. Not sure if you’re aware of this Bruce, but WA has now built into their training platform a system to alert me as a Wealthy Affiliate member when one of my referrals needs help.
I go check it out and half the time they’ve already got their question answered. I’m mean, that’s exactly what new marketers need when they’re learning affiliate marketing.
Their my #1 recommendation for a reason, glad you’re a member and reaping the benefits of a WA membership.
Thanks,
Todd
I’ve been working a few website and am applying affiliate marketing to my posts. But I’m not sure if I’m doing it right. I haven’t been able to convert many posts and I’m not sure if I’m ranking my post to hit my specific niche audienc. How do you know how to link you affiliate marketing programs properly? I’d really love your feedback. Thanks, Chris
Some very good questions Chris. To check your ranking’s, check out this post. To learn how to rank strategically to make successful online sales, visite this page..
Best,
Todd
Hi Todd,
I love the way you have simplified affiliate marketing. But it’s true, if you know how to get traffic then you’re well on your way to creating a successful affiliate marketing business.
Once you have mastered keyword research, getting free organic traffic is, in my opinion, definitely the best way to start.
Yes, it does take a little time and hard work in the beginning but the long term results are worth it.
Nice to see your warning about the Clickbank products. They seem to promote more or less anything and you really do need to check out the products before you promote them as an affiliate or risk losing credibility and the trust of your readers.
Learning affiliate marketing from an online training platform is worth doing and I know the step by step training you recommend is very easy to follow and great for beginners.
Thanks for another great post and I must check out your eBook on traffic!
Peter
Thanks Peter for your feedback, much appreciated. And yes, if you can master traffic and writing content to help your niche audience, you will have mastered the art of affiliate marketing, or at least one of the most important aspects of it.
To answer the question how to learn affiliate marketing, you’d be wise to go with a reputable training center like Wealthy Affiliate that teaches keyword use and how to use those keywords to your advantage. Once the traffic comes, it’s imperative to be able to convert that traffic to sales.
That’s what I loved about Wealthy Affiliate’s classes is that they would walk you post by post on how to do every aspect of it, from the keyword research, to keyword placement, to writing quality content and then search engine optimization to help you rank content fast.
That’s what really made me realize how valuable their service is for anyone who wants to be successful in affiliate marketing.
Thanks,
Todd
I have heard about affiliate marketing but I do not know how they actually work until I read your article here. It does seem like affiliate marketing is a great opportunity for those who want to build online businesses and make a part-time income or even a full-time income from affiliate marketing.
From your article, it seems like there are many things I need to learn before I start mine. Thanks for pointing me to where I can learn affiliate marketing from scratch. I just wonder if there is any upsells along the way?
Hi Alex, affiliate marketing is really a great concept and it’s simple to understand. I think it’s one of the best ways for people who want to start earning online income.
Once you understand how to connect to your niche through keyword research, it’s then about providing helpful content (written or video) on a regular basis, it does take a some time, but any business or career does as well.
I wrote a post that might help you Alex, it’s called How Long Does It Take To Make Money Online. You should read this to see if online business is right for you before you dedicate you time to it.
If you do, it’s a great thing and well worth it.
Cheers,
Todd
Hi Todd!
Thank you very much for your concise explanation of what affiliate marketing is! I have been seeing a lot of information on affiliate marketing, and apparently, there is some money to be made using this platform.
It seemed though, that everywhere I looked just wanted me to get my credit card out before I could even get a good explanation of what affiliate marketing is!
Here you show a way to learn to use these tools for FREE! Wow! Thanks for helping me out!
All the best to you!
Sincerely,
Tom
Hi Tom,
I hear ya my friend, I felt the same way several years ago when I started looking to niche websites and affiliate marketing. I actually was more prone to sell physical products onlinie, but affiliate marketing offers so many advantages over selling physical products. Click Here To See The Difference!
Yeah, the Wealthy Affiliate Online Business Training Center takes out the risk, no credit card required, just a open platform to check them out and see if affiliate marketing might be right for you.
I found this so refreshing because like you say, everybody wants you to sign up and pay immediately. Even to this day, it’s hard to find an online busess training platform that allows people to enter for free and openly check them out.
What’s better is WA has been helping newbies start online businesses for over a decade and they have all the tools and support you need to be successful online.
Thanks,
Todd
Hi Todd,
It’s a very good step by step introduction about affiliate marketing and for people who are new to this area, I can see your article is a very helpful guideline to understand the business. I can get some ideas where I should start. It is not an easy way to make fast money, but surely it is a long term way to get consistent income if one can follow a proven system.
I notice you have many articles about how to learn affiliate marketing, keyword research, and ranking content, I’ll go through your other articles and learn as much as I can.
Thanks for all your info.
Louis
Hi Louis,
Thanks for your feedback on our post. You are right that it takes some time to develop affiliate commissions/sales, but may not take you as long as you think. It all depends on the competition within your niche, your ability to create helpful content for that niche, and the relevancy of the affiliate products you promote in relationship to your niche.
Read this post on how long it takes to make money online to get a better understanding of this concept.
You can get your content, landing page, etc. in front of your niche audience right away if you’re willing to risk your money on Pay Per Click campaigns, but I think for the person who’s interested in creating long term success, you should follow a proven system and build your site correctly from the start.
To make the process easier, get lined up with Wealthy Affiliate and follow the course daily and take action on what you learn, you could be generating sales in as little as a month and full time income in less than a year.
Read how this 20 year old made it happen, in less than 11 months, he was making over $4,300/mo online.
Hope this helps,
Todd
Hi, Thank you once more for the content of your site. I have been reading through it the past half hour now. You got great stuff!
I am absolutely going to utilize click bank as I move forward with building my online business.
A lot of answers to the questions I’ve been having about affiliate marketing have been answered by reading through your site. Thank you and great job!
You bet Jessica, happy to help out and good to know that my site is a nice little affiliate marketing resource, that’s the goal.
Come back anytime and if you want to get a copy of our free (organic) guide to bringing in the traffic, you can get it right here.
Thanks,
Todd
Hi Todd,
Hello, I really like your website and great post on how to learn affiliate marketing – well done. I have only been with wealthy affiliate since February 12 and I had never done anything prior to online business, EVER! So yes, I am a newbie.
My passion is inline skating and that is my Niche. I also have a second website that came out April 15th and that one is promoting WA, So my second website is called work at home with Krissy. I have several pages placed on the first page of google ( mainly with my skating website ).
I want to do other things besides amazon, I am a Clickbank affiliate but I don’t know how to grab my link and promote products. I really want to learn more, your website is very helpful and easy to navigate. Keep up the great work!
Kind Regards,
Krissy
Thanks Krissy for your feedback on my site, much appreciated. Wealthy Affiliate is a great affiliate because it’s a great resource for internet marketers, old and new alike.
Your site name WorkAtHomeWithKrissy is catchy, I like it. With Clickbank, just grab your hotlink, it’s just right above the product photo/name.
I’d also encourage you to stick with your passion, get that site profitable before starting other sites. I know it’s tempting to promote Wealthy Affiliate since it’s such a rock solid program, but unless online marketing is your passion, stick to inline skating. I see too many people give up because they skip around working on different sites.
I know Amazon’s affiliate commissions are weak, along with their 1 day cookie, but Amazon converts really well, so once you have a product that has it’s own affiliate program (as well as an Amazon affiliate), try split testing the two and I bet you’ll find higher conversions with Amazon.
Also, be careful with Clickbank, many of their products can be scams, so make sure you check them out. And really, you should do this for every product you market. You want to make sure the products your promote are ABSOLUTELY GOOD FOR YOUR NICHE AUDIENCE!!!!! This will be the key to long term success.
Best,
Todd
Hi! Wow thank you for the info on affiliate marketing. This really cleared up some of the confusion I had about getting traffic to my affiliate website. I am going to explore more of your site as well. This answers so many questions I currently have.
One other question, how long does it take to make money in affiliate marketing? Thanks, Jessica
Hi Jessica, thanks for your feedback. It doesn’t take long to learn how to make money with affiliate marketing. The concept is easy to understand, it’s just the choices of how to bring in traffic. If you want to build organic traffic (that’s free), it takes some time but is well worth it in the long run.
I still have posts that I wrote 2 years ago that bring anywhere from 500 to 5,000 visitors to one single post each and every month.
How long? Good question, and here’s your answer, I wrote a post about a month or so ago fro one of my students. How Long Does It Take To Make Money Online – Click the link and check it out.
Best,
Todd